Category: General

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Dear Evan Hansen

Evan Hansen is bullied at school, particularly by one Conner Murphy. When Evan, at the direction of his therapist, starts writing encouraging letters to himself, Conner finds one in a printer tray and, mocking Evan, takes it. When Conner commits suicide later, his parents find the letter and come to believe that Conner wrote it, to Evan. So he wasn’t such a bully after all. Conner’s hot sister, Zoe, is at first reluctant to believe it but Evan, invited to the Murphy house for dinner, eventually convinces her that her parent’s misunderstanding is true, that Conner really was a friend to Evan. He goes so far as to persuade his friend, Jared, to help him write fake emails to “prove” his story, and helps his friend Alana start a foundation to build a park in memory of Conner. And Evan clearly enjoys being the center of attention, all the while protesting that he doesn’t, really, seriously, not at all. A lot of “oh no– I can’t believe you noticed me. Oh my god, what am I going to do now! I’m so embarrassed.”

The important thing to understand about “Dear Evan Hansen” is, firstly, that Evan is a lying, self-pitying narcissist with whom we are expected to sympathize. He abuses the trust of the Murphy family. He is not so much clueless about the damage he is doing as so self-centred that he doesn’t care. The second is that Evan is obviously gay, though the musical doesn’t acknowledge it, and, in fact, pretends that he really has the hots for Zoe. He clearly talks gay, acts gay, and demonstrates almost no convincing heterosexual interest in Zoe. At one point, Conner’s parents even wonder if he and Conner had a sexual relationship, but this being 2018, that is treated as something not to be embarrassed about. His interest in Zoe is a device to make you feel sorry for him in spite of his self-pitying and his narcissism.

The low point in the trajectory of this story is when his mother blames herself for Evan’s incredibly damaging prevarications: because she didn’t give him enough attention. No heterosexual male relates to his mother this way. There is nothing attractive about this bumbling, self-centered, pathetic whiner. And Zoe is most attractive when she disbelieves him, and becomes progressively weak as a character when she subverts her instincts to provide a convenient plot point for Evan’s complete emasculation.

“Dear Evan Hansen” won six Tony awards.  I can only conclude that the judges were carried away by their enthusiasm for the very predictable message about bullying.  I didn’t find the music very distinguished, or the staging inventive, or the acting, in the Toronto version, all that moving.  The social media angle is fresh, but not particularly deep or provocative: it draws no conclusions about the nature of this massive, sudden explosion of notoriety via the internet.

For the real deal about teen angst, mutating sexual identify, and generational conflict, see the marvelous “Spring Awakening” instead, if you can.

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Microsoft’s Requirements

Microsoft: “(Required) We collect required diagnostic data to keep Office secure, up-to-date, and performing as expected on the devices its installed on.”

This is the message that popped up as I tried to open Word on a new installation of Office 365 on my HP laptop.  “Required”.  Sounds powerful, doesn’t it.  It’s “required”, like, you have no choice.  Microsoft has no choice: it just has to have access to your computer to browse around and take whatever it wants while you are online.  They can’t do anything about it: it’s required.

There is nothing “required” at all.  It is pure bullshit.  There is no law or regulation that “requires” Microsoft to collect your data.  It’s Microsoft telling you to bend over and spread your cheeks– it’s “required”.

And “performing as expected”?  Absolutely, like the fat, bulky, cluttered, disordered disaster that, yes, I do expect.

But seriously, Microsoft is telling you that, finally, they are not even going to pretend to give you a choice about allowing them to go onto your computer and ransack your personal data.  Your acceptance of these conditions

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The Revisionist’s Doris Day

Oh the inevitable revisionist appreciation! Sometimes what is most obvious is the truth: Doris Day was a boring actress who did not make a single significant movie (other than as examples of pop kitsch). I grew up in the 1960’s and I cannot express what a delight and relief it was when Doris Day and other dreary, sanitized products of the studio system were replaced by more earthy actresses like Candice Bergen, Ali McGraw, Katherine Ross, and Jane Fonda (although I will always have a soft spot for Shirley Jones who really was as sexy as this writer thinks Doris Day was).

Doris should have accepted Mike Nichols’ offer to cast her as Mrs. Robinson in “The Graduate” (it’s true!). It would have saved her career from an unremitting sequence of trite films.

There is always some idiot out there who will find that Donny Osmond really was deep, that ABBA was really as good as the Beatles, that Elton John wrote meaningful songs, that Queen was original, that Neil Diamond rocked, and that Jerry Lewis was funny.  Don’t give in.  Most of the time, these “artists” really were as insignificant as the more astute critics  always thought they were.

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The Highwaythugs

“The Highwaymen” is a retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde story from the point of view of the lawmen. I thought, that’s interesting– how are they going to show the ambush that brought down Bonnie and Clyde? It doesn’t fit the mythical honor code of Texas lawmen you know, courage and integrity, and honor and crack shots. Confronting the bad guy with your demur manliness and demanding surrender. Texas lawmen don’t hide in the bushes and open fire without warning on an unsuspecting target– especially a woman.

 So they had Frank Hamer, the “courageous” and “honorable” former Texas Ranger step out in front of the car and demand their surrender first. That never happened, not in any of the many accounts of that day. They hid in the bushes and fired– something like 139 shots– at Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, using guns they knew to be able to pierce metal. Everyone agreed that the first shot hit Barrow in the head, so they were mainly shooting at Bonnie Parker from then on.

Then the movie showed Frank Hamer turning down money for an interview as if he was above that sort of thing– which also was not true (he fought for a bigger share of the reward money for years). 
It is unfortunate that the police were never clever enough to even really attempt to arrest Clyde Barrow without getting into a gun battle.  That would have required planning and skill, and it would have been very risky.  Here’s why: Clyde Barrow had a terrible, terrible experience in the Texas prison system and he had firmly decided that he was never, ever going back.  So, yes, whenever anyone tried to arrest him, he would resist.  Given a choice, he’d rather die in a gunfight than return to prison. 
Was there a way the police could have arrested him without taking a lot of casualties?  It would have been extremely difficult.  If they had had intelligence about a planned robbery or rendezvous with family, perhaps they could have planted lawmen near enough to wrestle him down to the ground before he could pull a weapon. 
Frank Hamer was famous for having killed over 50 bad guys in his career as a Texas Ranger.  We are expected to believe that in over 50 interactions with bad guys– suspects, you understand (of course– none of them were convicted yet of the crimes for which he was trying to apprehend them), Frank Hamer, we are told, out-gunned them fair and square in the process of trying to arrest them.   Think about that.  Over 50 times. 
Could be they were really stupid criminals, trying to outgun a famous Texas Ranger. 
Could be Frank Hamer didn’t like to bother with due process.
Later in life, Frank Hamer worked as a union-buster for some oil companies.  
I don’t mind the film making the argument that any attempt to arrest Bonnie and Clyde would have resulted in a gun battle.   But we don’t tolerate an out and out ambush nowadays.  The police are expected to at least make an attempt to arrest a suspect before shooting him or her.  Well,– they are expected to at least make it look like they did.
I just mind the BS about Frank Hamer being more heroic or smarter or honorable than he really was.
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The 2020 Election Debate

I hope the Democrats don’t fall into the trap of debating what Trump says he will do vs. what they say they will do.  That’s not the heart of the matter.  The heart of the matter is this: Trump says he will do many things, most of which he will not or cannot do.  His followers think he will get North Korea to get rid of their missiles, bring peace to the Middle East, get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan without giving it back to the Taliban, solve Venezuela, stop immigration from Central America, build new roads and bridges, cut taxes for the average American, reduce the budget deficit, strengthen the military so that it’s strong enough to confront endless imaginary threats, drive Russia out of the Ukraine, move better high-paying jobs to America from overseas,  get a better trade agreement with China, and give everyone access to a better health care plan than the ACA.

He is not even close do doing any of those things.  Why debate, for example, a Republican health care plan when it doesn’t exist?  Why debate policy towards the Ukraine when Trump has no intention of pushing the Russians back out?  Why debate Trump’s approach to income inequality when Trump has no policies that will affect it?

If the Democrats are wise, they will stick to the character of the man in office, knowing full-well that 30% of Americans adore that character.  What a character!  Did you hear Trump today?  He says he invented time!  That’s my guy.

So, have a coherent policy outline, but stick to the salient matter: you really want this embarrassment representing the U.S. to the world?  Okay, you can have him.

 

 

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Solved a Crime Did We?

The headline of this story  brags that “a determined squad of detectives finally solved a notorious crime after 40 years”.  If you believe that Lloyd Lee Welch isn’t an idiot who loved to brag and hold the attention of the police by making up stories about his family’s involvement in the abduction and murder of the Lyon sisters, Sheila and  Katherine, in March 1975 in Maryland, then yes, those heroes, those police officers, should all get medals.

Mr. Welch is a perfect suspect: he already has a conviction for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.  He gave a crazy statement to the police a few days after the kidnapping that was so incoherent and inconsistent that they gave him a lie detector test (which means nothing anyway) which he failed.

It’s not hard to sell all that to the police as a terrific incentive to focus on this suspect.

What you really have is a poorly educated possibly senile and foolish older man being manipulated, bullied, and tricked by a few cynical police officers into making so many wildly inaccurate but incriminating statements that they were able to indict him for the kidnappings and then persuade him to take a plea by threatening him with the death penalty.

In none of the accounts, did I notice the mention of a lawyer representing Mr. Welch.  Where is the lawyer?  Did they allow him to represent himself?  Did a judge, seriously, accept all this?

A good lawyer could probably have cut this case to shreds, which is why– it is safe to presume– the police did everything they could to get a guilty plea.

Ah but the “blood” that showed up in the basement under the light!

The samples they removed were identified as potentially being blood, prosecutors would later write in court papers.   The Spec

Is this some kind of joke?  This passes for forensic science in the U.S. in 2014?  Potentially blood.  This is presented to the public and the Lyon family as evidence?  What exactly is the scientific description of “potential blood”?

Once investigators began to focus on Welch, more evidence began to emerge

Inevitably.  Because they didn’t begin to focus on Welch because they had evidence.  They had a suspect: that’s the hallmark of bad policing.  Suspect first, twist arms, then evidence.

Mr. Welch told the police that he saw other relatives actually commit the crime.  Nobody else has been charged or arrested.  If they believe that he has implicated himself, why was no one else arrested?

Detectives investigated the uncle who Welch had claimed was in the basement by spending months listening to phone taps, talking to people who knew him and probing his past before prosecutors determined there was not evidence to seek an indictment.

There is, essentially, the same evidence as there is against Welch: none.

One article on the affair stated that the police had found bones on the property where it was alleged the bodies were burned.  That tidbit disappears from other, later accounts.   Perhaps what they actually probably had were “potential bones”.  Obviously, that too proved to be less than useful and I would have loved to have seen a good defense lawyer take that on in court.

Please note: there was no trial.  There was no competent defense lawyer carefully developing arguments against the evidence.  There was no evidence.  There was a man threatened with the death penalty if he did not confess.  He “confessed” though he didn’t really confess (read the details: he implicated others but did not claim that he himself was directly involved).  His girlfriend was threatened with charges too, which, if you read about these cases a lot, you will immediately recognize as an attempt to recruit her as a witness against her boyfriend.  (Kenneth Starr famously used this strategy against Julie Hiatt Steele in relation to Kathleen Willey’s claims of sexual assault in his investigation of Bill Clinton.  Linda Tripp collaborated Steele’s claim that Willey was actually actively seeking a relationship with Bill Clinton, and bragging about it.  When Steele refused to change her story, Starr indicted her; the case was tossed out in the end, but not before wrecking havoc on Steele’s life.)

The only connection to the crime is a rambling, incoherent statement he apparently gave at the time of the girls’ disappearance.  The fact that the police then did not feel fit to charge him with anything tells you volumes: they didn’t believe him in the immediate aftermath of the crime– why would different police 40 years later have better judgement?  There is also a sketch of a suspicious male seen in the mall on the day of the disappearance.  Once again, police at the time did not regard Welch as a suspect, but the police today assert that he strongly resembles the sketch.

The police get to put a massive feather in their caps.  They hate it when they have to stand in front of the public and admit they couldn’t solve the disappearance and probable murder of any child.  Just hate it.  They have ample motivation to fudge this investigation, proclaim themselves victorious and award themselves medals.

The sad part is how tempting it must be for the Lyon family to believe them.

Even sadder: a recent book calls the police work “a masterpiece of interrogation”.  Well, that it is, having achieved the desire result.

[I haven’t read the book.  I just scanned through a dozen reviews and, as I surmised, not one of them alludes to any kind of physical evidence; Mark Bowden seems dazzled by the success of the police in befuddling Welch into making stupid admissions with which the police threaten to seek the death penalty.  I hope Welch acknowledged (it is suggested he did, obliquely) that without any corroborating physical evidence they really don’t have a case.  They have a psycho.]

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Janet Jackson Gets Her “Due”

According to the New York Times, Janet Jackson has been unjustly deprived of accolades and esteem because of the scandalous event known as “nipplegate” in which a piece of her wardrobe fell away from her breast while Justin Timberlake was trying to put it back during a performance at the Superbowl in 2004.

No– the act was Justin Timberlake pulling the wardrobe away from her breast.  But what was supposed to happen– after the audience got their titillation out of the way– was that the pulled away fabric would just reveal more fabric.

The Superbowl is already a triviality, a monument to nothingness, a mammoth orgy of absurdly boring sport and vulgarity.   The half-time performances are already obscene: most artists lip-sync and gyrate to inane pop inanities while tanned boobie commentators ravish them with praise.

The song Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake was performing was about getting somebody naked.  Why was that acceptable but the real thing was not?  Because there is nothing in the world more appealing to hypocrites than titillation– literally!  The enjoyment of things they believe to be taboo without the actual thing.  Janet Jackson’s sin was that for a brief moment she dispelled the illusion that millions of viewers thinking deeply about tits would be exposed as actually thinking deeply about tits.  The secret about “nipplegate” is that the real offense was exposing just how dirty America’s minds really are.  Someone will have to be crucified in order to expunge this dirty secret and restore middle-America’s sense of respect and decency!  I will not tolerate a naked breast on tv!  I am a moral person!  But, go ahead and dance and wiggle your clothed hips and sing about getting naked– I love it– but I am a decent, moral person who will only vote for non-outed political candidates.

Was there “blame”?  What are you talking about?  They were doing exactly what the audience wanted.  The costumes, the lyrics, the gyrations, the rhythm– all were aimed at creating the largest sense of arousal possible while pretending to be enjoying the music and the artistry– and the sport– instead.

Shunned because of “nipplegate”?  I am astonished that anyone really cares about the wardrobe malfunction, for many reasons:

  • it was trivial– there is nothing horrifying about the human body, to children or adults;
  • Janet Jackson is trivial: there is not, among her products, not a single performance of anything, that matters in any sense: she is merely a pop artist of no particular originality or insight;
  • attributing indifference to an artist who is a woman and black can’t always be blamed on the fact that she is a woman and black: for heaven’s sake, she never was or is anything other than a pop artist of mediocre achievements;
  • how did she get to be an artist in the first place?  Did someone in the music industry notice this very talented singer somewhere and decide she should be a star?  Or, could she have had some privileged connections?  Do you need to ask?
  • Even Janet Jackson, or mediocre artistic achievement, deserves better than to be treated like that for a trivial indiscretion, even if it was intentional or her fault.

The Bush Administration tried to punish CBS for not preventing the mishap.  Last I heard, the courts had thrown out the case.

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Mueller Shrugged

After mulling it over for a day or so, I lean towards the idea that Mueller blinked.

He just couldn’t bring himself to enact the logical consequences of the evidence he accumulated on Trump’s actions in reference to the Russia investigation. Was he ever going to indict a sitting president? Maybe he just couldn’t bear the astonishing sustained brutal assault on the Justice Department and the intelligence services. “One thing about this president: he doesn’t care about collateral damage”. There is no other logical explanation: the evidence of Russian contacts is extensive and definitive; and of course, Trump and his defenders have never bothered to disprove any of it, because they can’t. Mueller identified Russian hackers down to the location of the building from which they operated in Moscow. In a stupid moment of an interview with Lester Holt, Trump admitted he fired Comey because of his investigation of those Russian hackers. That is the very definition of obstruction. But for some reason Mueller just couldn’t take that last step.

I’m sure he hoped Barr would take the burden, and I’ll bet he hopes Congress takes it up if Barr doesn’t (he won’t). Perhaps Mueller judged that in the current political atmosphere, little would have been served by indicting Trump and throwing the entire country into turmoil. Perhaps he hopes that in 2020 the situation will correct itself. But by constantly attacking Mueller (a lifelong Republican) and the FBI and the Justice Department and some of the most reputable criminal investigators in the country, Trump has already done more damage than anyone could have imagined on the day he was elected.

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Scary Songs: Galway to Graceland

This Song by Richard Thompson.

These lines:

They came in the thousands
From the whole human race
To pay their respects at his last resting place

I have always had a bit of contempt for Elvis.  I grew up in the 1960’s (born in 1956) and Elvis, to me, was a mere pop artist, a performer of other peoples’ songs, a teen idol, and a ridiculously bad actor.  By the time I was 12, I was listening to Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and had just been introduced to Leonard Cohen’s brooding debut album, “Songs of Leonard Cohen”.  I loved poetry, and songwriters.  I loved the lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Homeward Bound”, “Suzanne”.   Elvis, in comparison, seemed trite.  Elvis, in comparison, was trite.

The Beatles began to earn my respect with “Rubber Soul”;  clearly influenced by Dylan, songs like “Girl” and “Norwegian Wood” showed a growing artistic maturity that Elvis never evidenced.  Elvis, by this time, was playing Las Vegas, a monument to crass consumerism and treacly kitsch.  He was singing “My Way”, the consummate boring establishment hymn to self-sufficiency and arrogance.

That hasn’t changed a lot.  His body of work still seems trite to me.  And the massive public adoration, to me, is a testimony to his insignificance: the majority of people are superficial and easily led and manipulated.  Elvis was the product of the “star-maker machinery” and never transcended that existence.  He became rich– though his managers and agents siphoned off most of his fortune– and built a mansion and drove a Cadillac and surrounded himself with parasites and embraced all the worst symbols of capitalist privilege.  Some biographers find it tragic that he continued to perform long after his health began to fail.  He continued to perform because he was stupid and greedy.

He died, appropriately enough, on the toilet, exerting himself against massive constipation, tanked to the gills with prescription drugs, which one doctor said he prescribed to him in order to keep him away from illicit drugs.  On the toilet, he had a heart attack and fell forward.  He weighed 158 kilograms (350 pounds).  Even more ridiculous than Elvis himself, is the weird regard in which fans consider his last fatal moments.

His only Grammy awards were, weirdly, in the category of gospel.  The man famous for arousing the sexual desire of millions of young women, only received awards for hymns to the almighty.  I thought that was trivial too.  And ridiculous– what does a man like that really believe about God and religion?  What does it say about God and religion that it meant so much to a man like Elvis, who bought more than 100 Cadillacs in his lifetime and wore religious jewelry because he thought it might, in a pinch, ensure his salvation?

I’m not sure what Richard Thompson thinks of Elvis.  (I just found– to my shock– that Nick Cave, for example, is a fan of “Superstar” by the Carpenters, and “To Love Somebody” by the BeeGees, two of the most anemic pop hits ever recorded).    I’m not even sure– given this song– what he thinks of Elvis’ fanatical followers: he’s too good of a songwriter to lay it on thick.  If anything, he seems sympathetic, if you ignore the subtleties.  But she puts on a pink dress as if she was young again (which makes her seem ridiculous in the imagination) and she is clearly delusional (she thinks she’s married to Elvis)  and, finally, they have to drag her away.

All right– maybe that’s not so subtle.

In 2019, we are confronted with large numbers of peoples denying that global warming is real, embracing Donald Trump and Brexit and neo-fascism and every idiocy imaginable– the thousands from the whole human race.  They are frightening.  They adore Elvis and their massive pick-up trucks and their guns and ATVs and lottery tickets and beer.  “Deplorable” is not the right word for them: it suggests we expect better of them.   But Trump and Fox News have convinced them that their ill-formed conceptions of the world are true and right and deserve to prevail in the political sphere, and that complex information that confuses them is fake.  They are convinced that those intellectual elites who used to be deferred to because they were intellectual elites are only out to trick them out of their pick-up trucks and guns and Elvis and even their genders.

 

 

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Cool Hand Luke as the Evil Twin of Shawshank Redemption

I hope some lovers of “Shawshank” will take the time some day to watch “Cool Hand Luke”. To me, “Luke” is everything “Shawshank” thinks it is but is not. “Luke” explores the function of hero worship in a society of losers and miscreants, how they make him a sacrificial substitute for their own fears and inadequacies, and how, when he forces them to face the reality of their own weaknesses, they must destroy him. And then, once he is safely expelled, they re-imagine him as the avatar of their own fantasies of power and defiance. It is a fascinating film, and a comment on the type of heroism expressed in “Shawshank”. I call “Luke” the “evil” twin of “Shawshank”, in the sense that it incisively undermines the fundamental myth of the latter, the same way “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”, in my opinion, destroys the mythic con of “Dead Poets Society” by showing you the real implications of a charismatic teacher who develops a cadre of followers among his students.

The story:  It is 1948.  Luke (Lucas) Jackson is introduced to us as a miscreant, a rebellious young man who takes a pipe cutter to the parking meters in a small town somewhere and is arrested and sentenced to a work prison.  He is tested by the other inmates, particularly Dragline, to see how tough he is.   When he refuses to knuckle under to the established hierarchy in prison, he arouses the dislike of Dragline, the reigning tough.  But when he proves to be very, very defiant, even challenging Dragline to a boxing match (which he loses, very badly)  the other prisoners begin to admire him.  When he bets that he can eat 50 hard-boiled eggs, and wins,  he becomes a hero and even Dragline acknowledges his preeminence.  At a card game, he successfully bluffs a very weak hand and earns the nickname, “Cool Hand” Luke.

He persuades the other prisoners to put maximum effort into a road-building task.  To their own surprise, they finish the job early and get a break from the guards.

When he is denied a temporary release to see his mother before she dies, he bides his time and then escapes, and the admiration of the other prisoners knows no bounds.  Dragline, in particular, idolizes him and never tires of recounting his exploits which grow bigger and bigger with each telling.

“What we have here, is failure to communicate”.  It’s a wonderful scene: the prison warden, having attended a seminar somewhere, seems genuinely, twistedly well-meaning: if you would just obey and respect us, your life would be miserable, yes, but we wouldn’t have to beat you.  They beat him relentlessly sure that they will break him.  And they do.  He becomes so docile and respectful that they make him a “trustee”, and the other prisoners begin to hold him in contempt.  As they relax the strictures around him, Luke breaks free one more time.  Dragline, seizing the opportunity, and intoxicated with Luke’s audaciousness, joins him, only to realize, shortly afterwards, that with only two years left on his sentence, it was stupid decision.

Spoiler alert: the police do catch up with Luke, thanks to a betrayal but the Judas of this film, Dragline.  It is clear that this time the warden does not intend to take him alive.  Dragline does survive, however, to regale his fellow prisoners with his selective rendering of Luke’s defiance and courage.

The summary you will find on the IMDB then ends with “Luke managed to unmask the injustice and hypocrisy of the system in which he was confined… in the final analysis, he could not be broken by the system”.

Did this person really watch the film?  Did he get it?  It is a very common misapprehension of “Cool Hand Luke”.  Most people seem to come away with the idea that Luke was heroic for standing up to brutal, ignorant authority.  I don’t think the movie is really about that.  It is really about how  the role of myth in our culture, how our “heroes” become substitutes for own responsibility for our own freedom and dignity.  Dragline and the other prisoners have surrendered their individuality and self-respect in exchange for a slightly less toxic life in the prison camp.  They have given up something of enormous importance in exchange for a trinket.